Fairy Favors
by OyHumbug
Summary: Upset and distracted over his mother's secrets, over what she did to Felicity, Oliver goes to the foundry only to find the object of his distraction – Felicity – already there. With her that night, he finds redemption and damnation. (A 2x13 Rewrite Piece)


**Title**: Fairy Favors  
**Category**: Arrow  
**Genre**: Drama, Romance, Angst  
**Ship**: Olicity  
**Rating**: M  
**Word Count**: 4,178  
**Disclaimer**: I own neither the characters presented in this story nor the show from which they originate. Unfortunately.  
**Summary**: Upset and distracted over his mother's secrets, over what she did to Felicity, Oliver goes to the foundry only to find the object of his distraction – Felicity – already there. With her that night, he finds redemption and damnation. (A 2x13 Rewrite Piece)  
_**A/N**__: So, when I said this would be the happier piece, I certainly didn't mean that it would be fluff. There's still plenty of angst, but I personally much prefer the events of this one shot to those which occurred on the show. We'll see if you agree with me. As always, thanks for reading. I'll respond to remarks again this upcoming weekend. (It's when I do my online 'housekeeping.') Finally, the quote used in this story is from Act 2, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Enjoy!_

~Charlynn~

**Fairy Favors  
An Olicity One Shot**

Distraction.

Oliver felt like distraction was his constant state of being now. He could not focus. There was a clear goal in front of him: discover the source of the mirakuru and shut it down. But the past was an anchor strapped to his patience, constantly dragging him under. And the present was no better. There were so many demands upon his time, upon his fleeting control, that never did it feel like he could truly commit to any one aspect of his life. And now his mother. And Thea. And _Felicity_.

She had caught him off guard. At the press conference, Oliver had not been expecting... well, _that_. His mother's secret knocked the wind out of him. It was more crippling than a knife wound, than the bullet she had put in him a year earlier. And it had rendered him distracted, yet again, for the rest of the day. While his mind had been busy sorting out secrets and his body had been occupied with yet another fight – that one, however, not his own, Oliver had temporarily forgotten... or maybe he had just forced himself not to think about... what else had rocked him that morning.

Felicity's fear.

He had no idea what his mother had threatened her with other than the fact that it had to do with him, but, whatever Moira Queen's method, it had been effective – not effective enough to prevent Felicity from doing what she thought was best _for him_ even at her own expense but effective enough to render his friend, his partner terrified.

Despite all the words Felicity used, she rarely said what truly mattered. As she had opened up to Oliver that day... for the first time, really, he had finally realized just how guarded she was. It rivaled his own wary restraint. She had told him about losses so profound, so painfully central to who she was as a woman on her deepest level. For a moment, it had been like looking in a mirror. But then his rage took over, and he had disconnected from her, disengaged from every other feeling but that rage, for rage was comforting in its familiarity, and Oliver had needed it to face the rest of his day.

But the day was over, and he was now alone, and, though the rage still lingered, it was tempered by weariness and grief. To think that his own mother could take someone as sweet and pure as Felicity and twist her up inside until the point where she fractured apart...? He needed to know what Moira was tormenting Felicity with. He faltered slightly, afraid that maybe this was ultimately the thing he couldn't save Felicity from. Oliver had always known he would fail her; he had just always assumed – hoped – that he'd have more time with her before the inevitable happened.

For a moment, he had been tempted to ask his mother what she had said or done towards Felicity. Was it personal or professional? Was she trying to break her heart or break her spirit? Perhaps she had evidence of Felicity's penchant and ability for hacking? Maybe she had found the father who had abandoned her, the mother who wasn't close to her and was endangering one or both of them in order to blackmail Felicity into submission? But his friend was stronger than that. She had stood up to his mother, probably knowing – just as he did – that Moira couldn't be trusted. So that's why, when he confronted his mother, he hadn't asked her about Felicity. Anything she would have told him would have been a half true or a whole lie anyway.

After leaving the mansion – the place that was supposed to be home but felt more like an albatross around his neck, Oliver had fleetingly considered going to Felicity. She was the only person who would be able to focus him once more, who would be able to ease his mind with her unflinching veracity and unwavering faith. They'd talk. She'd tell him what had happened between her and his mother; she'd reassure him that, no matter what, she believed in him, in his ability to keep her safe; and his mind, and his heart, and his conscience, and his demons would be quieted once again. Only, Felicity was at her apartment, and since Russia, and the Count, and Barry Allen, going to Felicity's home felt too intimate, too personal. He cared. He cared too much. And, if he allowed even just one chink in his armor to show, she would shatter him, break his resolve. So, he pushed her away. He kept her at arm's length. And that meant staying away, too.

"Oliver?"

At the sound of her voice behind him – far more vulnerable than he ever wanted to hear it, he froze. Sighed. His lids fell in resignation; his shoulders tensed in anticipation. His head bowed; his hands clenched at his sides. How had he been so distracted that he hadn't even known she was there?

Pivoting to face her, Oliver demanded, "what are you doing here?" He tone was harsher than he intended, and he regretfully watched her cringe in reaction. "Felicity, I didn't..."

She interrupted him. "No, it's okay. I'll go."

She was already moving – standing from behind her bank of computer screens and reaching for her purse – when he noticed that she had been crying. Nothing about her appearance gave her away except her rosy nose. Otherwise, she looked as perfectly polished as she had that morning. She was already rounding the desk before Oliver finally reacted, leaping forward to block her path, his hands unconsciously, foolishly going to her shoulders.

He should have apologized. He should have asked her if she was alright. He should have just wrapped her in his arms and hugged her until the hopelessness in her eyes was replaced by the happiness he was used to seeing, the happiness he needed to see. Instead, Oliver asked, "what did she say to you?"

They both knew who he was talking about. When Felicity looked away and refused to meet his gaze, his worry compounded. "It's nothing," she dismissed. While Felicity teased him about his inability to lie to her, she had the same weakness. "It doesn't matter," she added, still not telling him the truth _and_ still averting her eyes.

That told him it was anything but nothing. He stepped closer, distantly noticing that his hands on her shoulders weren't idyl. They were gently caressing. Soothing. "It matters to me."

"Look, your mother's very observant. She noticed something about me, something she thought she could use against me, and she pounced on it. But it failed. She failed. I told you anyway, and, now, we're here, and..." Her words trailed off, and she half groaned, half sobbed. "Oh god, she was right."

Oliver's brow furrowed. "Felicity?"

For a moment, he watched as she bit her bottom lip to the point of distraction, to the point of pain, but then the words started to tumble forward, faster and faster and more damning with every syllable. "She said you'd hate me. She said, if I told you the truth about... about your sister, that you'd hate her but that you'd also hate me, too. And I watched you up on that stage. I watched the torment twist your face until the point where I don't think you even recognized yourself before, finally, your mask slipped down once again. And then, when we came back here, you weren't really _here_ anymore, and I wasn't sure if it was because you were elsewhere, stuck someplace in your own head, or if it was because _I _was here, and you couldn't be near me. Not anymore. Not after what I..."

The space around them fell silent with thought; the space between them became dense and heavy with feeling. "Felicity." Sometimes, it seemed like all he said was her name, yet it could mean so much. _She _meant so much. "I could never hate you."

"Everybody has a breaking point, Oliver. You might not know where it is yet, but it's there."

His mind spasmed as he tried to put the fragmented edges of her confession together. She was afraid of losing someone close to her again. His mother watched people, studied them. She picked them apart until she found their vulnerability. Felicity, because of his mother's threats, feared that Oliver hated her. His mother had threatened her with him. With losing him. "Not with you; never with you," he promised her.

With his vow, she finally looked at him. Her wet lashes lifted slowly as if weighed down from the moisture of her tears, and he felt her gaze like a caress. It was trust, and it was anticipation, and it was a promise. He should have stepped away. He should have let go of her and withdrawn, but her willingness to allow him to touch her was his promise returned to him tenfold. Just as he could never hate her, she would never leave him. She'd never walk away. In that moment, after losing his mother – the woman who was supposed to always love him unconditionally, he had no choice but to allow himself to feel and return what Felicity was offering him.

His hands fell from her shoulders as his touch sought her skin. He rained his fingers down her arms before ghosting them back in whispering trails. He circled her delicate wrists, fleetingly laced their fingers, and then kissed the pads of his calloused digits against the petal soft skin at the inside of her elbows. He traced the edge of her blouse, marveling at the contrast between the material and her skin, between the two of them – him and her. Then he felt the faint fluttering of her pulse, and he needed to be closer yet still.

While one hand settled to rest over her heart, the other folded around the pale, delicate column of her neck before sliding down to cradle the center of her chest. She was so tiny that his fingers overlapped. The contrast of his tanned skin against the creaminess of her shirt made Oliver pause as a craving to see that same juxtaposition but with her flesh against his rocketed through him. So, he lifted his touch back to her neck, her throat, and he trickled his fingers upward until he met the firmness, the beautiful stubbornness of her jaw. He traced its lines – honoring, appreciating, memorizing. For just a breath of a second, his thumbs tickled her earlobes; his pinkie rubbed the arrow she wore for him. But then he was distracted once more: by the play of her necklace against her skin, by her collarbones, by the shallow V of her blouse. A single finger stopped there, pressed in there. Like a prayer.

Silently, Felicity lifted her arms above her head, the fluid movement as graceful as a ballerina. At first, he simply drank in the way her body's lines changed and adapted to the new position, her breasts shifted and thrust upwards – his one, single, solitary digit ever-closer to where it wanted to be. At least, for now. As his hands dropped to her waist to lightly grasp the material of her shirt and pull it free from her skirt, Felicity watched him – never blinking, ever-searching. He stripped the cloaking material away.

Her bra was the color of snow. Bright, new, pure, it should have blinded him, but, instead, it beckoned him. His hands resumed their meandering path against and across Felicity's body, starting with the straps of her chaste, simple lingerie. Down, down, down, he followed those same lines until his touch came to rest against the points of her hipbones, still hidden beneath pleated fabric. The moment served to illustrate just how petite Felicity really was. Sometimes, Oliver forgot this, too persuaded by the fierceness of her loyalty and passion, her dedication, to notice, but it was a truth he couldn't ignore while touching her. His palms skimmed upwards until they could wrap completely around her waist, his encircled fingers meeting and trapping her within his caress.

She sighed in contentment, pleasure. Her diaphragm expanded beneath his touch, her chest beneath his gaze and drawing his attention once more. There, just on the edge of where her bra met the shadow of roundness that was her left breast, Oliver found the tiniest, faintest of freckles. It captivated him, absorbed him.

At first, he was content to simply touch. He grazed the back of his fingers against the beauty mark, watching as goosebumps appeared around it. He traced its fine edges with the tip of an index nail. But then he wanted to taste it. Mouth hovering over her chest, Oliver breathed against Felicity, the heat of his mouth doing nothing to eradicate her goosebumps. In fact, it just exasperated their prominence. He licked it, kissed it, sucked on it. But then he wanted to watch it as the freckle trembled with arousal.

Without pausing in his oral ministrations against the mark, Oliver reached behind Felicity and, with a simple twist of his fingers, unsnapped her bra. He pulled back far enough to watch her roll her shoulders forward, out, and then down, allowing the scrap of cotton to slip away from her flushed and aroused skin to land at their feet. When he met her gaze, he found only blown pupils and rightness.

Oliver returned to his explorations, repeating his previous temptations against the newly bared flesh of Felicity's breasts. While his fingers teased, oh so slowly easing their way closer and closer to the pouting, pink nipples that beckoned and begged, he dropped first his nose and then his mouth to the valley there between. She smelled like raindrops on a magnolia blossom; she tasted like redemption. And, as he consumed her, was burned by her, that beauty mark was never far from his mind, nor his sight, as he watched Felicity's heart beat ever-faster, her skin blush with desire, her entire being pulse with need.

He dropped to his knees before her, surprised when her hands clenched tightly in his shirt, the gesture a silent appeal to feel his naked skin beneath her touch. And he wanted that as well. Oliver had no idea for how long Felicity's hands had been upon him as well, but, now, he could focus on little else. He removed his top. Her fingers trembled; his settled behind her knees as he pulled her closer and buried his face, nuzzled his face, low against her abdomen. Eventually, he raked his touch up the backs of her legs, tickled her thighs, and then allowed just the blunt edges of his digits to kiss the underside of her derriere before finding the edges of her panties and initiating their descent to the floor. When they landed before him, he looked down. They, too, were snow white. And cotton. As Felicity stepped out of them, she stepped out of her shoes as well.

He surged to his feet, his hands falling to the waist of his cargo pants as his mouth finally claimed hers. Oliver made quick work of divesting himself of the rest of his clothing, leaving him naked and Felicity gasping in nothing but her flirty, pleated skirt. When he collapsed back onto his knees once more, he pulled her with him, his hands wrapped possessively around her hips, his tongue wrapped around her own. She straddled him, her legs falling open around his knees and her plush bottom sitting upon his thighs. When Oliver was finally forced to rip his lips away from her already bruised mouth, he found her smiling across from him, a mischievous mink. Wordlessly, Felicity lifted her arms above her head once again and quirked a brow.

He knew exactly what she wanted, because he wanted it, too.

With an urgency his questing fingers did not reveal, Oliver found the zipper of her skirt and released it. Once the material was loosened, he raised it – past her tiny waist, over the breasts red from his stubble rasping against their sensitive flesh, by her delicate neck, and above the face he knew so well and always sought out. Before either of them realized it, his hands were buried in her loose hair, the tie cast aside somewhere into the shadows surrounding them, and _he _was buried to the hilt inside of her.

It took every last reserve of strength Oliver had to resist lifting her away and then slamming her back down on top of him, to not pull his hips back only to thrust up once more – over, and over, and over again. That would come – and soon, but, first, he just wanted to feel her. Be surrounded by her. Crawl inside of her. And Felicity obliged, clenching around him as if she, too, never wanted him to move again.

Eventually, however, they both surrendered. Her hands settled upon his shoulders and his gripped – branded – her flesh where the tops of her legs blended into her torso. As they rocked together, undulated, Oliver alternated between sipping from the skin of her throat, her ribcage, the tips of her breasts to watching those very same breasts slip through the air like they were water, a slight resistance to give definition. Eventually, her slim oh-so-talented digits fell away from him just as her back arched. As she bent further and further away, degree by degree, the angle of their coupling changed until Felicity's upper body was curling downwards to the floor, her hair a puddle of reflected sunlight upon the mat. She stretched, and she tensed, and then she climaxed.

Even drowning in the waves and ripples of her pleasure, she still knew what Oliver wanted, what he needed. Vertebra by vertebra, she lifted herself back up towards him until her arms were wrapped around his corded, straining with effort neck and his face – his face, his gaze, his nuzzling cheeks, his burrowing chin, his nose, his mouth – could once again seek that freckle that had so captured his attention. As he scraped his teeth over the mark, Oliver came with one last thrust, one first roar of satisfaction.

It was moments later when he found his heart still racing, his breathing still erratic, and his body still shocking pleasantly that Oliver started to whisper, "'And I serve the fairy queen; To dew her orbs upon the green. The cowslips tall her pensioners be. In their gold coats, spots you see. Those be rubies, fairy favors. In those freckles live their savors. I must go seek some dewdrops here; and hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.'"

He had no idea where the words came from – some long ago learned yet forgotten until it finally made sense treasure, but Oliver knew why he had said them. That freckle – that damn, mesmerizing, perfectly imperfect blemish – was going to haunt him. There were other marks upon Felicity's flesh, ones equally as deserving of obsession, but Oliver knew that he couldn't handle more torture than just one reminder. So, he had focused upon that little mark instead, and, now, it was singed into his memory – a gift he would always cherish.

She slipped off of him, reclining backwards and pulling him with her so that he was cocooned between her bent legs, his chest pressed against her sex and torso. Oliver laid his head on the softness of her belly, one arm wrapping beneath and around her, while the other wandered up so that his fingers could find the silken underside of her left breast. Every so often, he'd lift his touch to crown the nipple before falling back down and resuming lazy sweeps. When her own digits found his hair – nails murmuring and scratching in a pattern only Felicity knew and only he would ever know, exhaustion and contentment caused his lids to close.

Oliver was almost asleep when her soft words reached his pleasure-drugged mind. "I know." He didn't have to voice his question; she answered without prompting. "I know that, in the morning, everything will go back to the way it was before. You're not ready... to care yet."

He wasn't going to argue with her. His gift to her was going to be to remain silent – to let her hope that maybe someday he would finally be ready despite the fact that Oliver doubted that he could ever reach that point of brave stupidity, let alone live that long, but then she made it sound like she doubted how special and important to him she already was, and he couldn't _not _say something. "Felicity, I already care. I've _always _cared. I just... I can't let myself feel that. Yet." Ever. He exhaled harshly. He would have tensed, but her rhythmic, hypnotic fingers wouldn't allow him to. "Are you... are you going to be okay?"

"I won't lie, it's going to hurt. I'll probably be pretty useless tomorrow, because I'll be all mopey, and girly, and sad."

"You'll cry," he simplified, yet her tears would never be simple. "I'll make you cry."

"I know you're not going to want to hear this, Oliver, but it won't be the first time you've made me cry, and it won't be the last either." She laughed then, and the lightness of the moment surprised him. He savored the feeling of her body vibrating beneath his. "I'll also probably start out the morning with a happy dance."

"A happy dance?"

"You know," Felicity replied, and he could hear her eye roll in her voice. "Cheesy music, underwear, bedhead, and a remote as a microphone – I'll jump, and hop, and fist pump my way through my apartment."

He chuckled along with her. "I think I'd like to see that."

"Maybe someday."

Her words were meant to be a reassurance; they were anything but. He sobered quickly. "And after tomorrow?"

Felicity inhaled, his upper body rising with the movement. "It'll take time. You'll have to give me time to readjust. I mean, I just saw you naked, Oliver. Like really naked. Sex naked." He wanted to know what the various, different levels of naked were in her mind – in her wonderful, unique, amusing mind, but he wanted to hear what she'd inadvertently reveal in her babbling more, so he remained quiet. "And that's not something a girl, especially this IT girl, will be able to forget anytime soon. So, yeah, will I be undressing you with my eyes for the next few weeks? Maybe months? I'll try not to make it longer than that. But, yeah, probably. Okay, so I'll definitely be imagining you naked like all the time. But dang it, Oliver. You know how distracted I get when you're just shirtless. Now that I know what the package... I mean, the whole package looks like... So, yeah, time."

"I understand." And he did. He definitely, certainly did, because, every time he saw her – no matter what she was wearing – he would think about that pretty little freckle at the edge of her breast. "I'll, uh, probably be distant for a while. I'll hold myself back so I don't... touch you." Take you. Again.

"I'll probably, most likely, will absolutely not be able to be around you when you're... with someone else. I know you're not ready to be with someone you really care about right now, but I also know that you really like sex, Oliver. But, then, so do I. Well, everybody really likes sex. But you like _really _really like it, so I know it's not going to be you pining away, lonely, while you can't be in a relationship. I just... I won't handle that well. I _didn't _handle it well, and that was before... us, tonight. I'd just offer to be that 'it meant nothing' girl for you in the interim, but..."

He didn't let her finish that thought. Using the arm not wrapped around her to leverage himself up, Oliver looked down upon her face. "I couldn't ask that of you, and I can't do that... to myself. You could never be an 'it meant nothing' girl, Felicity."

She nodded – a silent acknowledgment of everything he wasn't saying, and he settled back down against her. "So, we go back to how things were before. Nothing's changed."

Except he couldn't go back. Except _nothing _was the same.

"And, in the meantime," Felicity said, her legs tightening around him. "We still have tonight."

Tonight: yet another of her fairy favors – sweet, and precious, and oh-so-fleeting.

Oliver knew it was more than he deserved.


End file.
